BOM Connector™

A “Must Have” Application for Every Electronic Manufacturer!

Dealing with BOM data is one of the biggest headaches faced by both OEM and EMS manufacturers. EMS manufacturers are confronted daily with a wide variety of BOM formats and ever-changing content. Usually the only rule that applies is “there are no rules”. Matching customer parts to internal parts, comparing different BOM revisions and communicating with purchasing are too often done manually, which is mistake-prone and can easily take hours or even days of effort. Preparing accurate quotations means constantly checking for current component pricing and delivery conditions. A good BOM application should help with all these tasks. BOM Connector™ is exactly that application!

Preparing Customer BOMs and Production Planning

Using the various search routines, the user can quickly and easily find the most suitable part from within the ERP-System for a gi- ven customer part. A particularly innovative “SmartSearch”, for example, is a big time saver.

With “Smartsearch” the part’s description field, or fields, are evaluated and broken down into individual elements, so that “Cap 100NF 10PCT 0603” gets assigned as »CAP« »100NF« »10PCT« »0603«.

The system searches the ERP data for the ‘part numbers’ that come closest in function, with an intelligent “fuzzy logic” method, independent of notation and sequence.

As shown below, the search algorithm properly interprets »10%« and »10PCT«, as well as »0.1UF« and »100NF«. Parts which best match the search criteria are displayed in a best- match-first sequence. The user simply selects the desired part with a double-click and the ERP information is added to the BOM. The correspondence between customer ‘part number’ and internal ‘part number’ is stored in a “Customer Info Set” (CIS) table for future reference, meaning the system gets smarter with each usage.

The customer BOM doesn’t contain ‘part numbers’? No problem! BOM Connector™ creates a unique ID “code” from the description field(s) as a reference. For future use, you can use the “CIS Search” to quickly find parts that were already matched.

Additional search features include the “MPN Search” should the customer BOM contain manufacturer part numbers or if the customer has provided an approved manufacturer/vendor list (AML/AVL). A configurable “operator search” finds parts based on common statements (equals, non-equals, contains, begins with, etc.).

And last-but-not-least, a manual “Google-like” search which lets you find parts based on any user-entered criteria. Any additional information the user needs in the BOM, such as manufacturing station or process can be entered interactively. The resulting “Golden BOM” can be exported in any format with user-created templates.

The BC-Exchange module can then upload the BOM directly to the ERP-System!